Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I clutched at books…

-Richard Wright, Black Boy

If you want a purely enraptured detailing all of and only of love provoked by these pages, look elsewhere. If you desire an analysis of the fundamental roots of fantasy and how this book fits in within the wider scope of the literary genre, it is not here. If you crave a complete and utter breakdown of all the faults this novel begets on the larger realm of reality, you will be unsatisfied. I have nothing that goes fully one way, or the other, or even some objective mixture of the three. Instead, I have a story. Perhaps you wish to read it.

For better or for worse, I never found a home within the house and its mortal constituents that I was brought up in. Mind you, every sort of physical sustenance was assured, and there was never a lack for the more mercantile requirements of a modern upbringing. However, financial stability is no substitute for emotional well being, and my younger self found the latter only through those curiously tied together stacks of paper, often very weighty and filled with all manner of tiny squiggles and the occasional picture. The most powerful of these objects, the ones that granted the sort of comforting balance of the familiar and the novel, were the three battered and yellowing paperbacks of The Lord of the Rings. I have faint memories of my first devouring, but can still clearly recall my feeling of surprised gratification upon watching the 2001 live-action of The Fellowship of the Ring and finding it worthy of the book it sought to portray.

I was ten years old at the time, and still had much to learn.

For this book of my childhood, this book that formulated my love for literature that has only increased as the years go by, is not perfect. This book spoke as easily as it did to my younger self for reasons of both personal upbringing and dominant culture, the kind of English values and European sensibilities that I am descended from and sways the world in an obstinately oppressive manner to this day. It is not surprising, then, that this novel has proved to be so popular and so overwhelmingly powerful in is influence, to the point of it being credited with spawning the fantasy genre by the more fanatic of its upholders. An unlawful accreditation, to be sure, and a dangerously attractive one, to swallow wholesale the attributes utilized and commended by this one piece of work. A work that, through a combination of its monumental following and easy moralizing, promotes upon the world today a view of life that is vicious in its intolerance of all of those who did not fit within Tolkien's privileged sensibilities.

Slowly but surely, I matured from a young child enamored with this single literary achievement into an adult for whom this one work, no matter how lengthy or detailed, is not enough. And somewhere along the way, I had to make a choice. Whether to hold fast to this one work in an everlasting fit of idolatrous sentiment, or to strike out on my own past this one set of pages in search of something more. Whether to reconcile to the work, or to reconcile the work to myself. For as much as the work is treacherous and blind to the wider realities, it was also the origin of my passion for the written word in all its esoteric and long winded forms. To deny that would be to not only deny the history of my self, but also to deny the history of the world entire, a world whose beginnings were not just, were not kind, were not welcoming to each and every soul brought into its plains of varied existence.

And so, I love The Lord of the Rings. I love its valuing of the good and the righteous in the larger scheme of things, as well as its caring for the happy and peaceful lives of the small. I love the winding descriptions through hill and dale, over crag and cranny, the swift sailing across the mighty rivers and the painful treks across barren slag, a delighting in the natural world and all its tangible glory that I feel today's modern sense should not do without. I love the page after page of sights, and sounds, and most of all the strains of knowledge threading and shaping their way through every rock and field, the sheer amount of history that this world has seen, the ancient events that have trickled their way down and lead the insatiably wondrous journey for further erudition ever on. I love the fearful superstitions that give way to enlightened respect, the long bred enmities that slowly but surely are broken down into new-found bonds of mutual understanding, the persistent and rarely rewarded effort to restrain from killing when there is a chance of further life leading to something more.

What I hate is when those who have read the book seek to impose the letter of the matter onto the experience of every reader, using the book as bigoted shield against the natural progression of time. What I hate is when those who profess to love the work have made such a mockery of loving it that the only humane response to such an outburst is to hate the work wholesale. What I loathe and utterly despise is the poisonous formation of sides when it comes this book and indeed any work of literature, a refusal to consider a book as a mix of both good and bad that can never be fully or easily reconciled in the mind of those insistent on thinking in terms of black and white. Indeed, much of what I hate in relation to this book can be applied to the world at large, still trenchant in fumbling antagonism when those who oppress wonder at the violence of the oppressed, again and again choosing shoddy half measures of solutions cloaked in lies and, worst of all, complete lack of interest in seeing past the lies.

I can no longer go back home, to the first opening of these pages that birthed my confidence in finding a place in terms of literature and, indeed, the world at large. If I truly wish to say I love this book, I must reconcile this love to all of that I have learned, and lived, and measure by measure acknowledge the influence of my younger years and the wisdom I will gain in the future that has yet to come. I must come to terms with the fact that Tolkien, this author to whom I owe so much, would likely despise me, a member of that so called fairer sex that throughout these pages was constantly placed on a domestic and debilitated pedestal, a member who has the engraving of the One Ring tattooed upon her back. For he hated to see the image appropriated for wider use, and saw it as a symbol of evil that did not deserve to be venerated for the intricacy of its design or the connotations of its formation.

To that I say, too bad. The author created this world out of a passionate love for language and all its myriad veins of influence in the cultures it births and the land it names, and its lengthy prose and detailed care set the stage for my confident desire to discover further works of literature, no matter how long in script or difficult in absorption. The author also created a seductive illusion of black and white, insidious eugenics and obstinate tradition, a full embracing of which would indeed grant much power in the realm where those who love the work congregate in great numbers and often in great ignorance. When Tolkien created the One Ring, and carved out its fiery script on the pages of his monumental tome, he created the true symbol of his beloved Middle Earth, one that may have been destroyed within the pages but lives on in the hearts who prefer a complex web of blindly formulaic undertakings to the true demands of creating a fair and just reality. However, he also called for applicability when it came to the reading of the work, preferring that readers find their own way through the pages in context with their own lives. And, finally, the book ends with the passing of the Age that fueled the pages, and the ending is coupled with the knowledge that the days of this story have ended, and for better or for worse will never come again.

And so, I chose a more permanent reminder of the influence that this book has had on me, and do not claim that my interpretation has sway over any others. I simply ask that when reading this work, keep in mind all that has gone into it, as well what has yet to come. Most importantly, acknowledge the differing views and the inherent validity of each and every one, the admirable attributes that are worthy of conservation and the atrocious remnants that must be transformed but whose history of occurrence must never, ever, be forgotten. In short, use well the days.

I cannot change the first steps I took in this world of written word that has shaped my life in so many ways, nor would I want to. This love of mine in no way resembles the clean cut symbol of a heart used in so many cards and printed doings, but the incontrovertible yet fragile pulsing of my heart that, for all its bloody ugliness, is my one and only source of living. And, in the effort of living on through many days of hope, and change, reconciliation upon transformation upon ever constant growing, I wouldn't give it up for the world.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
Let others follow it who can!
Let them a journey new begin,
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still round the corner there may wait
A new road or a secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.

Home is where the heart is. And, here, I shall ever return.